


Not a Tale of Romance

by darthneko



Series: What Matters Most [1]
Category: World of Warcraft
Genre: Age Difference, Consensual Underage Sex, Forget Video Game Mechanics, Headcanon, M/M, Mists of Pandaria, Mpreg, Not Canon Compliant, Pandaren Culture, Pandaria is not for the weak of heart, Quest - The Bell Speaks, Slow Burn, So much headcanon, species difference
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-07
Updated: 2018-04-23
Packaged: 2018-08-29 16:38:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 6
Words: 17,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8497540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darthneko/pseuds/darthneko
Summary: Ren Stoneclaw is a Lorewalker, a former monk turned scholar who has given up the troubles of the outside world to devote himself to his people's ancestral land of Pandaria. He thought he left the concerns of the Alliance behind him... but the outside world will come calling, regardless, sometimes in the most unexpected ways.





	1. An Unexpected Emergency

**Author's Note:**

> Backtracking to the very beginning - this is where my series "What Matters Most" starts. While this comes chronologically first, I'd suggest reading the others to see if you like the concept before jumping into this one. I still have no shame and no regrets. Have a lot of OCs instead, and what happens in Pandaria continues to only sort of stay there.
> 
> EDIT - I've reworked the earlier chapters (1-5) and will be reposting - the chapter breaks come in different spots and it's all been streamlined.

The fresh snow crunched under foot as the lone traveler paused beside the trail marker. The brightly colored scrap of flag snapping in the wind was the only indication that there was a trail through the high snows above the valley pass, and looking forward Ren could see nothing but undisturbed snow, pocked with the tiny marks and trails of the high mountain animals, but unmarked by climber’s feet.  
  
Perfect. He tugged the wrap around his face down, exhaling a warm cloud of steam into the crystal clear air. The cold bit at his nose and throat, but it felt good to breathe unencumbered for a moment. He dug the end of his staff into the snow, steadying himself; his feet were wrapped in the mountain style, thick yak fur and oil cloth to keep the cold and wet alike out, but it covered his toes and the layers felt clumsy and awkward for someone used to soft leather boots and sandals.  
  
In the valley below something cried out. Ren raised his head to listen, ears cocked beneath the fleece lined warmth of his hood. The cry came again, distinctly animal, and he shaded his eyes with one hand to watch the wide winged prey bird launch itself skyward from the cliffs opposite, something small clutched in its talons. Ren shrugged; he had been listening for the cries of the caravan traders for days, they all had, but an early snowstorm had delayed the pack trains in the lower Kun-Lai foothills and there was still no sign of them. Tugging his wrap back up, he looked ahead for the next trail marker and continued to climb.  
  
The sun had passed its zenith before he stopped again, this time to veer off of the marked trail, climbing up to the shallow ledge above in a scrabble of claws and carefully placed feet. There, nestled in the lee of the rocks, a smudge of purplish green had caught his eye. Ren pulled himself up to the ledge, eyes bright, then yanked his wrap back down and leaned in to breath out a soft puff, brushing the snow from the delicate leaves of the tiny plant, which furled tight in protest.  
  
“There you are, you beauty,” Ren crooned to it. He braced his feet, reaching for the bundle secured to his staff, and untied it with a deft tug. The warm gloves that left his claws free came loose, tugged off where he caught them with his teeth and then stuffed into his belt. The burlap bundle came apart to yield a little wicker bowl and a heavier pair of mushan hide gloves, tipped in metal caps that fit over his claws. Ren pulled them on, smoothing the long cuffs up over the cinched sleeves of his layered outer tunic, and gave himself another little push with a muted grunt, bracing his belly against the edge of the ledge and the tips of his toes on the rocks below as he reached for the small plant.  
  
It took some work, and careful digging with his capped claws, to free the plant from the rocky soil. Ren teased the roots free carefully, ears lowered and tongue tucked against the back of his teeth in concentration. Qian Shui, called the Thousand Year Sleep for its long dormant periods, only bloomed once every dozen or so years on the highest peaks in the Kun-Lai ranges. Reports from Grummle traders of spotting the rare plant along the trails had been a large part of what had brought Ren out to the mountains. Qian Shui, properly prepared and dried, was prized by healers as the source of a deep, painless sleep when brewed in moderation.  
  
The little plant came free, tipping into his palm, and Ren breathed out, carefully depositing the clumped dirt of the root ball into the wicker bowl and scooping fresh snow around it before wrapping the whole lot back into the burlap and attaching it back to his staff. The gloves he worked carefully free, turning the heavy hide inside out as he wriggled them off until the hands and capped fingers were tucked safely inside themselves. Fresh and undried, Qian Shui was sometimes referred to as Qian Shi - the Thousand Year Death, a painless and nearly untraceable poison, highly sought after by those who clung to the shadows and struck from behind, but another reason the herb was only rarely harvested as few herbalists were willing to risk their lives, first from the icy heights and then from the plant itself.  
  
Ren pulled his regular gloves back on and slid carefully back down to the trail, dusting himself off once he was solidly on his feet. He had brought back three of the little plants so far, with the fourth now secured in his satchel. The best times, he had found, were when the snows were fresh - disturbances, be it from caravans or the high mountain herders or even the occasional lone hunter, tended to make the plants ten times as difficult to find, any nearby disruption pulling them in on themselves in the shelter of the snow. When a fresh dusting had begun to fall the night before he had gotten ready, pulling himself out of his warm bedroll before first light to brave the upper trails, and his diligence had paid off.  
  
Humming a merry but toneless tune, Ren headed back down the trail. The herb dangling from his staff was worth a heavy bag of gold coin, but he had already traded two of the previous ones to the local healers and had no need to sell it. With luck - and the fresh snow the night before was a good indication his luck would continue to hold - the caravans might be delayed another day or two, giving him time to finish writing up the scroll on the herb that he was working on. Finished, he could send it safely back down the mountains with the Grummle traders to the archives in the Vale - a treatise on the harvesting, uses, and preservation of Qian Shui, by Lorewalker Ren Stoneclaw, of Shen-Zin Su.  
  
_That_ still gave him a little pleased sort of thrill when he had cause to dig out his official seal, the Lorewalker carved jade imprint in thick red ink and his name signed below. He had never, in his wildest dreams as a cub, imagined himself in the black trimmed yellow tabard of a Lorewalker - truth be told, he had cut out of or slept through more Lorewalker lessons on the Great Turtle than he could even rightly remember, no matter how many times his teachers and his parents had boxed his ears. Sending him to Master Shang’s academy had been the last despairing attempt of his mother to make something of her eldest wayward son, back when she had still held any hope that some discipline and training would make him settle down into a family and life amongst the Dai-Lo valley.  
  
Instead, it had given him the opportunity, along with his cousin, to escape the turtle entirely. Communication with Shen-Zin Su was few and far between; Ren knew his name hadn’t been stricken from the family scrolls in disgrace, but not for lack of his mother ranting about it in the sporadic letters that reached him. He couldn’t regret it, though - the world was so much larger and greater than their little portion on the back of Shen-Zin Su, his youthful chaotic energy transformed into a desire to learn and explore and know, and never had he felt it quite as much as he did the first time he set foot on the ancestral shores of Pandaria. He had absorbed in months what the Lorewalkers of his youth had spent years trying to drill into his head and was still hungry, still wanting more, and for the first time the praise of his teaching masters had felt _good_ , like something he had actually earned and wanted to keep.  
  
The suggestion that his first proper research project coincide with his skill with herbs had been one he had embraced. He had been several months among the tiny communities - too small to be towns or villages, really, most no larger than a double handful of adults and the few cubs - who clung to the steep mountain slopes, dotted along the trade routes that the Grummles traveled. The seal of his newfound profession opened doors, and his willingness to lend a hand at whatever task presented itself had created a place for him and that was why, when he spotted a figure on the lower portion of the trail, he raised a hand to wave with a cheerful greeting.  
  
The figure waved back, scrambling up the trail with renewed haste. Closer, the other yanked down their scarf, revealing the bright green eyes and solid russet mask marking of Mai Frostflower, the eldest daughter of the senior healers who ran the little waystation nestled in the pass. She was panting from her quick climb, her breath pluming in the cold air as she reached to urgently grasp at Ren’s sleeve. “Lorewalker! Thank the ancestors! No one was sure where you’d gone!”  
  
Ren’s ears dropped reflexively beneath his hood even as he reached out to steady the younger female. She was still half cub, only as tall as his chest and lacking the healthy weight and curves she would eventually grow into, stuck for the season in that awkward inbetween state from plump cub to plump adult when everything was too thin while she seemed to shoot up overnight. Ren remembered those adolescent years with no fondness at all and tried to always listen to Mai as well as he did her elders so as not to slight her. “I was just walking the upper trails,” he told her. “I left word with Brother Snowmelt this morning. Why? What’s needed?”  
  
Mai tugged at his arm, her claws prickling through the layers of his sleeve in her haste. “You have to come quickly,” she said, her eyes bright and wide. “Father said you’re the only one. You’re from Outside, aren’t you?”  
  
Beneath his hood, Ren’s ears went completely flat, and he couldn’t quite help the grimace that bared a hint of tooth, though as things went “outside” was perhaps the least offensive way of saying it, and certainly a step up from “wild dog” which was at the other extreme of things he had heard flung at Pandaren from the Turtle by those who had stayed grounded in Pandaria. It wasn’t, however, something he had expected to hear now - not when his presence had been accepted in the mountain communities without question, his Dai-Lo accent passed off as a lowland thing and didn’t the Valley of the Winds have Stoneclaws in it? To be sure, Ren hadn’t tried to really hide it, but he hadn’t offered the information either; Mai’s father knew, as he had seen Ren’s official letter of recommendation, but he had seemed far more impressed with Lorewalker Cho’s seal than with noticing Ren’s origin.  
  
Mai was still pulling at his arm, intent on dragging him down the path if he wouldn’t come himself. “We saw the signal right after breakfast,” she said breathlessly. The lined hide hat on her head was almost quivering, probably from the excited tremble of her ears beneath it. “The lookouts spotted it; we sent out a kite immediately, of course, as soon as we could - no telling if anyone else saw it, it was a strange thing, not a steady signal, more like a streak. Huang said it didn’t look like a signal at all, and Cousin Smallpebble said signals that aren’t signals are unlucky, but Father insisted and he says he’s glad he did, the wounds are the worst he’s seen in years, not since that time…”  
  
“Wounds?” Ren felt his own ears prick unwillingly forward, picking up the pace of his steps. “Someone was hurt?”  
  
“Yes!” Mai turned her wide eyes on him, nearly vibrating in her excitement. “Oh, but Lorewalker, that’s not all - the male they brought in… he has _NO FUR_.”  



	2. Rescue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 'Warning' (if you can call it that) for mention of headcanon Pandaren & Jinyu biology, which involves a more compact design (ala most fur bearing mammals) than humans have.
> 
> * * * * *

Ren hadn’t tried to explain to the excited Mai that “no fur” actually described more of the varied races of Azeroth than it didn’t; in her young world all people had fur, whether they were Pandaren, Grummle, or Yaungol. Jinyu didn’t travel the Burlap Trail, the thin air and bitter cold of the high mountain passes more uncomfortable for them than any amount of wrapping up against the weather could counter. To a cub like Mai, born and raised among the peaks, races without fur were nothing but a Lorewalker tale, something out of myth and stories.    
  
A wounded outsider explained the urgent need for Ren, however, and as much as it made his fur bristle he had to admit Feng Frostflower had thought quickly and correctly. Be it orc, elf, human, dwarf, troll, or any other, anyone in Pandaria - anyone with any business being in Pandaria - would speak some variation of the common trade tongue. It was the first language Ren had learned when he departed the turtle, and nine times out of ten it had sufficed throughout the width and breadth of Azeroth. If they needed to talk to their mystery wounded male - some would-be adventurer who had got themselves in trouble on the mountain trails, Ren privately bet himself - then Ren was reasonably certain he could manage.   
  
He was less sure when Mai delivered him to the tent reserved for the healers and he got his first look at their mysterious unfortunate outsider. Human, was his first thought, and his second-   
  
“Are you sure he’s still _alive?_ ” Ren asked, aghast. Feng, who was handing clean rolls of bandages to his mate as quickly as she reached for them, shot him a disgruntled look.    
  
The human had, by the look of it, been caught in an avalanche. The dangerous cascades of rock and snow could easily be fatal and were triggered sometimes by the smallest things, including inexperienced climbers who strayed from the flagged paths. Cut and bloodied, battered, and Ren could count a handful of broken bones just by the awkward look of the limbs that Mei Fan, Feng’s mate, was ruthlessly straightening and setting as she went. Her niece, Jun, was kneeling on the other side of the bedding the human had been placed on, eyes closed in quiet concentration, her hands a graceful and unstopping flow of motion that traced the pathways of the chi between her and their patient.    
  
Ears flat, Ren grimaced and went to Feng’s side, deftly snagging the next roll of bandages and passing them to Mei Fan. His own discipline had lead him to the path of the tiger, his chi use tied more to attack than healing, a necessary skill on the roads he had traveled but fairly useless in the face of critical wounds. He could, however, provide an extra pair of hands for mundane things; he had washed enough battle wounds in his life to know what order a healer needed supplies in. Feng gripped his shoulder for a moment in silent thanks, then shifted to Jun’s side, dropping in beside her without so much as an ear flicker between them, his own hands continuing the energy flow across the human’s fractured legs while Jun concentrated on the man’s torso.    
  
Mei Fan was less serene than her niece or mate, her ears laid back and mouth set in an unhappy line. “Broken to bits,” she hissed to Ren, even as she sponged the man’s arm clean and carefully felt over the break that bent the forearm at an unlikely angle, “and I’ve never seen one intact! Broken is broken, but are they meant to go together like Jinyu? Or is he starved?”   
  
Ren thought quickly, mentally comparing both the humans and Jinyu he had seen being treated on battlefields. “Long and thin, like Jinyu,” he confirmed, though to his eye the male was thinner than he should be. Smaller, too - all humans looked small to Pandaren eyes, especially when laying down, little more than adolescent cub sized, but the male laying on the furs was even smaller than Ren thought he should be. He counted ribs, but the pelvic and chest bones weren’t alarmingly prominent, some muscle and softer flesh laying over the limbs. Maybe just small, then, Ren thought, and passed Mei Fan the thin bamboo slats she was using as splints when she held out her hand.    
  
He wasn’t sure how long it took. Mai appeared at intervals, passing in bowls of fresh water, more bamboo and bandages, or small dishes of powdered herbs. Ren had seen healing spells on the battlefield - chi or Light, passed from a healer’s hand to an open, bleeding wound, and had watched as the wound stitched itself back together before his eyes. He had, however, been the recipient of such treatment often enough, either from a priest or monk or the small, emergency spell for easing pain that he could perform himself, that he knew how much it took out of a body. A near mortal stab wound might be shrugged off… for a time, so long as the adrenaline of danger kept a body going, but it was paid for in exhaustion and a ravenous appetite later. He couldn’t imagine how much a toll the healing of the man’s wounds would take.   
  
Mei Fan, seeing his frown as she set another, much uglier break in the man’s leg and then held the torn skin together until Feng’s chi channeling could begin to seal the rend, shook her head. “Too much,” she said softly, dusting a pinch of sharp smelling powder over the wound as the skin began to sluggishly knit. “We reached him in time, but it was too close. Blood in the lungs from the ribs, torn up inside; Jun is healing that first, the rest will have to wait until later.” She shook her head, ears laid back. “He will not be walking again before spring.”   
  
“Avalanche?” Ren asked softly, handing her another set of slats and bandages to brace the leg with once she had wiped it clean.    
  
The healer shook her head, frowning as she deftly wrapped the splint in place and then turned her attention to the man’s foot, which was barely as large as her palm. “Feels intact,” she huffed after carefully manipulating it, “and he was wearing boots, but what do I know?” She grimaced, lips peeling back from her teeth. “Outlanders. Crazy _stupid_ outlanders. No claws, too many toes…”   
  
“May I?” Ren asked. Mei Fan relinquished the man’s foot with a relieved looking flick of her ear, trusting that a Lorewalker or a Pandaren from the greater world would know about her alien patient whether they were trained in the healing arts or not.    
  
Ren cupped the man’s foot in his hand, examining the flex of the ankle and arch and the bend of each toe. He was warm to the touch; the healing tent was well insulated and heated from a central brazier, and there wasn’t any hint of frostbite on the pale skin. Good boots, Ren thought, or the man hadn’t been out on the peak that long. Pale as belly fur all over, but that wasn’t unusual for humans. Fragile to the touch - Ren knew humans were tougher than they looked, but their barely fleshed limbs always struck him as ridiculously fragile and the proof of it was laying in a broken heap on the furs before them.    
  
He found a warmer spot by the man’s instep - they weren’t so different from Pandaren, except for how elongated everything was - and another on the heel, but nothing grated or caught when moved and bruises were going to be the least of the man’s worries. Ren nodded to Mei Fan, who had been watching, and she took the human’s other foot between her hands with slightly more lifted ears, copying the same range of manipulation that Ren had used.    
  
Feng obligingly traded places with his mate, the warm brush of his chi barely skipping a beat as they moved so that Mei Fan could attend to the human’s other side. Jun had one paw pressed as lightly as a moth wing to the man’s chest, her other hand sweeping in and out in a fluid circle in time to the rise and fall of breath. Ren, watching those shallow breaths with a tight feeling in his gut - too close indeed, with one Mistweaver needed just to keep the man breathing - lost track of his duties until Mei Fan reached over to yank sharply on one of his cheek braids, making him wince.    
  
“Pay attention,” she scolded, and if she was using the same tone on him that she used on Mai he had no one but himself to blame. She brushed off the bandage roll he offered her, however, her brows drawn tight and low as she jabbed a claw at the man’s prone body. “Injury?” she inquired sharply, “or normal?”   
  
It took Ren a moment to realize that she was pointing not at the already deeply blackened bruises covering the man’s midriff, but at his naked groin. He reminded himself that he was the only one in the settlement to have ever seen a human and that they had, once, been just as strange to him; it let him keep his expression as politely serene as befitted a queried Lorewalker. “Normal,” he assured her. “The furless races are mostly so.”   
  
Mei Fan’s ears flicked back again. “Exposed like Hozen, then,” she scoffed. “Jinyu have no fur and are not so poorly made.” Despite her huffing her touch was infinitely gentle as she prodded over the man’s pelvis, though her ears had nearly disappeared into her hair she held them so tight to her head. “No meat to them,” she grumbled. “The blood runs so close to the surface I don’t know how he has any left in him.”    
  
She felt carefully up to the bottom of the man’s rib cage, pressing and rolling against the already bruised flesh of his belly. Reaching down, she ran the back of her thumb claw up the bottom of the man’s bare foot, eliciting a faint jerk along one leg, then repeated it to the other. “Intact,” she pronounced, satisfied. “He will probably be passing blood for the next week, assuming we can get any water into him, but he’s as whole as we can manage right now. Jun and Feng will heal the worst, time will have to do the rest.”   
  
Mei Fan sat back on her heels, her hands coming to rest on her well rounded hips - her youngest cub was nearing adulthood, but it was still abundantly clear that Mei Fan had been a solid beauty in her youth, a look that motherhood and time had only mellowed with the faint traces of faded gray along her muzzle - and fixed Ren with a sharp, no-nonsense glare. “And _what_ , in the name of all of the Ancestors, am I supposed to dose him with?” she demanded. “I could kill him as easy as cure him, all for want of one spoon or leaf too much or not enough!”   
  
Ren hesitated, thinking hard about the herbal brews, potions, and poultices he had used during his travels. “Humans are not too dissimilar to us,” he told her, and that was one relief - he would have had far less idea what was or wasn’t safe for, say, a Draenei, but he had ingested enough human brewed potions to know the similarities. “Brew them weak, the way you would for a cub.” He glanced at the man, who was more bandages than not and looked even smaller for it. “A small cub,” Ren amended, grimacing.    
  
Mei Fan nodded, arranging the human’s splinted and bound limbs. “No heavier than Mai was when she started growing,” she agreed. “I hate to leave him in pain, but better safe than not - I’ll start him on the weakest doses, and only after testing them.” She touched her mate and niece lightly, stroking over their noses, then shifted around Jun to briefly touch her own nose to the man’s throat, grimacing. “Dry, the lot of them - how hot should he run?”   
  
Ren pushed himself up to come to her side, bending to press a hand to the human’s forehead, and winced at the feel. “Not that hot. Cold compresses would probably be best - forehead and back of neck, chest and body if it doesn’t begin to drop.”   
  
The healer nodded, straightening with a firm stretch through her shoulders. “Will you put tea on, Lorewalker?” she asked. “The large pot, with ginger and a scoop of the red canister - we could all use a cup, and Jun will drink a pot by herself after this. I’ll get a bowl of snow; at least cold is something we never run out of.”   
  
By the time Ren had found the tea amidst the myriad colored canisters of dried herbs and remedies stored in the back of the large tent Mei Fan had already brought in bowls of fresh snow, setting one to melt beside the brazier and wrapping layers of snow inside layers of bandages to place over her patient’s head and neck. “Yes, that’s the one,” she said when he brought the metal jar to her. “Just dust it straight into the water along with a pinch of the ground root.”   
  
Ren filled the largest of the brewing pots with already melted water from the keg kept inside the tent, placing it atop the brazier and stirring up the fire. He was just stirring the tea into the steaming water when Mei Fan joined him, supporting Feng who was weaving a bit as he walked like a drunkard, or as though the endless stream of the chi was still flowing through and over him like a river current.    
  
Ren hastily ladled out two cups and passed them over. Feng took both, draining one and handing it back immediately. Mei Fan fussed softly, getting her mate situated on one of the scattered pillows before going back to check on Jun. Ren busied himself ladling up more cups for Feng, who only slowed after the fourth, pressing the heated ceramic curve of the cup between his squinted eyes, ears held at stiff angles out from his head.    
  
He was no healer or assistant, but Ren was more than familiar with the look - on himself or others - of a splitting headache, usually the remnant of the night before. He got up, fetching a length of bandage and some of the half melted snow Mei Fan had brought in, soaking the loose woven cloth in it and draping it over Feng’s neck when he returned to the fire. The older healer grunted softly in gratitude, dragging the cold cloth up around his ears. “Hard work,” he huffed, draining the dregs of his tea and holding it out for another refill, “when you’re not sure what goes where.”   
  
“He’ll be alright, though?” Ren asked, refilling the other male’s cup and then filling three more and lining them up as Mei Fan returned with Jun, who was stumbling and all but collapsed onto a cushion by the fire. Mei Fan pushed a cup into her niece’s hand, steadying it until Jun could gulp it down and reach for the next; the younger female’s eyes were closed, ears low, and even from across the brazier Ren could see how pale and dry her nose looked, eyes and mouth pinched around the edges. He filled the cups as Mei Fan handed them back to him, adding more water to the pot though he doubted it would have enough time to warm or steep before the healers drank it.    
  
It took the rest of the first pot and half of the second before Jun sighed, sitting up a little easier and running her claws through the disheveled plaits of her hair. “He’s not breathing blood,” she said, sounding pleased, “and if we can keep him from jostling his ribs, or his lungs from filling in fluid, he should be well enough given time.”   
  
“He was better than I thought when we first dug him out,” Feng snorted. “Lucky spawn of a vermin.”   
  
“It was an avalanche, then?” Ren asked, curious. “And no other survivors?”   
  
Feng glanced sideways at his mate. Mei Fan huffed, ears flicking back, and Feng grimaced. “No avalanche,” he said after a moment, the words growled. “Just damned fool outsiders. The Shado-Pan warned us, they did, straight from Lord Zhu himself, but I didn’t think…” he shook his head, giving Ren an apologetic nod. “No offense, Lorewalker. But… you’ve been there, haven’t you? Can you tell us about them?”   
  
All three of them turned to him, even Jun’s ears cocked in an exhausted but attentive angle. Ren sat back on a cushion, threading his fingers together over his stomach; the telltale twiddling and tapping of his hands when he was nervous was a habit he’d never overcome, but could disguise if he kept his hands clasped or occupied. “He’s a ‘human’,” he told them, the Common word rolling a little awkwardly through his mouth after months spent speaking and thinking in nothing but Pandaren. “Their empire is based in the Eastern Kingdoms; they are allies with several other races and their Alliance holds most of that continent.”   
  
Feng nodded slowly, repeating the Common words under his own breath a few times to familiarize himself with them. “And these humans, this Alliance,” he asked, frowning, “they are in the habit of destroying what is not theirs? Or of provoking violence?”   
  
Ren winced slightly, ears flicking back. He had, for a brief time, served the Alliance; had, over the years, continued to work with them when the occasion warranted. “Sometimes,” he allowed, sighing. “I will not say they are blameless, but they usually do not destroy without reason or attack without cause.” He grimaced, glancing at the bandage wrapped figure on the furs. The damage, to his eyes, still looked more like falling impact than weapons. “Was there a battle?”   
  
“We don’t know,” Feng admitted, slumping. The healer leaned forward to fill his cup again, cradling it between his hands as he breathed the steam. “The signal came from Emperor’s Reach. I thought… well, the structure is ancient, and not all that sound, difficult to reach, and you know how the adventurous will climb up there sometimes, but…”   
  
He broke off, shaking his head. Jun stirred a little, her claws picking at the fringe of the woven blanket Mei Fan had draped over her. “Sha,” she said softly, and the word, in her quiet breath, raised the fur across Ren’s neck in a prickling rush. “There were bodies… I don’t know what type, larger than this one, all dead, and they reeked of Sha. The smell was so thick I thought I would choke.”   
  
“You could feel it,” Mei Fan interjected, shuddering, her fur on end and expression sour. “Like rancid, congealed oil. We signaled the Shado-Pan - something will have to be done with the bodies, or the Sha will linger who knows how long.”   
  
“That one,” Feng said, indicating the male they had rescued, “was under rubble, half crushed.” He lowered his ears, looking pained. “It looked to be a great bell, from one of the Temples, maybe, though I don’t know which one. I’m sorry, Lorewalker, but it was brought down, shattered. We dug him out from the pieces.”   
  
It took Ren several minutes, his mind automatically hunting down references in the hundreds of facts he had learned in order to sit his Lorewalker examination, the histories of each temple and any particulars about their grounds and bells. Nothing remarkable, for the most part, and no reason for anyone to have hauled such an artifact up to the terrace, unless…   
  
When the pieces connected, a chance heard scrap of news that had been circulating when he had left the Vale to come to Kun-Lai, Ren felt a cold chill shudder down his spine and into his gut. Hissing softly through his teeth, he tugged at his own cheek braids, pulling the tail of his hair over his shoulder to twist it fretfully through his hands. Surely not, but… if it was…  “Terrible,” he managed, and it was - the deaths, the sha… he had seen the Alliance and the Horde clash before, and what was left behind in the wake of it, but it seemed ten times as real, here, in his ancestral homeland, as it had out in the greater world. But the inclusion of a destroyed bell, the rumors of the unearthing of the Divine Bell… “I’ll need to send word to the Seat of Knowledge - they will want to know, and can coordinate with the Shado-Pan to secure the area.”   
  
Jun made a face, grimacing. “You’ll need to do it now, if you’re doing it,” she said. “It was shaky coming back from the Reach; there won’t be any kites going anywhere for the next few days.”   
  
Ren blinked at her blankly and Mei Fan snorted. “Lowlander,” she said, as though it explained everything. “It’s going to snow.”   
  
“But it was clear earlier…” Ren said, ears flicking back. “I thought the caravan might make it through.”   
  
All three of them were grinning now, Feng shaking his head in amusement. “No, not for another ten day, if that. Snow tonight, tomorrow, maybe more. Reng-Yu’s hawk might be able to get through, but don’t expect a return message for a few days. Mei Fan’s right - can’t you smell it?”   
  
Ren’s baffled look sent Jun into peals of laughter that tapered off into a dry throated cough. He quickly refilled her cup and Mei Fan thumped her niece on the back a few times as Jun drank it down. “Sorry,” she managed when she could. “I’m sorry, Ren, it’s just…”   
  
Ren shrugged good naturedly. “I’m a lowlander,” he agreed. It was true enough, no matter how the words were split; the Dai-Lo valley nestled low against the edge of the great Turtle shell, and even the highest peaks on Shen-Zin Su were a far cry from the towering eternally snow capped monsters that crowned Kun-Lai. The snowstorms that were, to him, freak occurrences that descended at random over the mountains, were things he had learned the community he was staying with predicted with the same ease that he could have told if it would rain on the morrow when he had been a cub on the farm.    
  
If they were looking at another double handful of days of being snowed in, though… Ren chewed at the inside of his cheek, then pushed himself up. “Let me just go talk to Reng-Yu,” he said, dipping an apologetic bow. “The Lorewalkers will want to know about this, and might be able to shed some light on any news of the outlanders desecrating a Temple.”   
  
Or on which faction, the Alliance or the Horde, had been in possession of the Divine Bell. If it _was_ the Bell, and not just _a_ bell. Ren grit his teeth, tugging at his braids in distraction as he ducked through the doubled flap of the tent door, emerging out into the rapidly fading sunset. The cold was heavier than it had been, biting at his ears and nose and sitting painfully dry in his lungs; Ren shivered, hugging his arms to his sides, and cast a wary eye up at the flat, cloud heavy sky above as he hurried up the little path that wound through the squat, round tent huts to the one set higher on the ridge and used by the community look-out.    
  
Huang had drawn the evening watch, a dark shadow on the look-out platform where his sable fur rendered him almost invisible. Tall and intimidating in looks, Huang’s temperament was anything but, and he was happy to describe the signal that had alerted them that morning as “a stream of light” that had arched out over the peaks. “A spell of some sort, I’d wager,” Huang told him. “Outland magic, mark my word. Is it true the one they brought back is as bald as a Jinyu?”   
  
“Skin, not scales,” Ren corrected, to Huang’s ears-back amazement. He hastily described the need to get a message out and Huang huffed and swung himself down from the look-out perch to go get his mate.    
  
Reng-Yu emerged from the hut several minutes later, yawning. The hawkmaster was as thin and grumpy as Huang was large and amiable, the mates like mirror opposites of each other. “Terrible time for it,” he growled, and left Ren at the stone paved entrance to the hut as he dug out quill and ink and the tiny slips of parchment a hawk could carry, returning to thrust the lot into Ren’s hands. “Lorewalker business, though, none of mine. My girls will get through, but don’t be expecting a reply any time soon.”   
  
Ren thanked him hastily, quickly jotting the pertinent points of information in his smallest script. _//Emperor’s Reach - battle, human Alliance, Sha presence confirmed. Shado-Pan alerted. Broken bell.//_ He underscored the last in emphasis and rolled the little scrap of parchment up tight. “To go to Lorewalker Cho, in the Seat of Knowledge,” he told Reng-Yu, bowing low.    
  
The hawkmaster grumbled but took the message and let Ren follow him out to the small mews built into the rocks. One hawk looked much like any other to Ren’s eye, but Reng-Yu deftly plucked one hooded and sleepy bird from her perch, slipping the rolled message into the holder attached to the hawk’s leg. “She’s the only one that will fly at night,” he told Ren gruffly, “and a quarter of the watch later I would have told you to go hang, Lorewalker or no.”   
  
“Snow,” Ren agreed, just as though he could read the signs. Reng-Yu snorted, waking the hawk with a gentle touch and untying her hood and leather ties as he stepped back outside. Whatever he whispered to the bird was not for Ren’s ears, or for any Pandaren, but the hawk gave a cry when Reng-Yu tossed her into the air, her wings snapping open as she soared upwards.   
  
“At least you know you’re being a damned fool,” the hawkmaster growled. “Ping-yin will get your note through, though, don’t worry - the storm’s coming from the northwest, she’ll race it south and be in the lowlands by tomorrow.”   
  
Ren bowed again, thanking the other male. It would, he hoped, be enough - if it _was_ the Divine Bell, the Lorewalker elders at the Seat would know what to do about it. The wind had picked up, the cold now a sharp snap that hurried his steps down the path, and Ren shook himself all over as he ducked back into the healing tent, his fur fluffed against the chill.   
  
Mei Fan was waiting for him, alone. “I sent them to bed,” she said, handing Ren a bowl of thick stew, the hard grains of the mountains cooked in yak milk and butter with fatty bits of meat and root vegetables floated in the mix. It wasn’t elaborate eating, by any means, but it was warm and filling and Ren took it gratefully, wrapping his hands around the stoneware bowl. “I can wake Feng if his lungs start filling again, but Jun needs some rest.”   
  
“Do you think you’ll need to?” Ren asked, taking a seat near the fire.    
  
“If he was Pandaren, no,” the healer replied promptly, with a disgruntled sniff. “They’ve done the best they can, but it’s not as though we know his race well.” She turned her eyes on Ren, who paused in mid bite and then hastily took another, mistrusting the look in Mei Fan’s calculating gaze. “So… what temperature _should_ he run at? His breathing - too fast? Too slow? How quickly do their hearts beat?”   
  
Ren grimaced to himself, swallowing to clear his mouth, and using the excuse of the food to give himself time as he wracked his memory for answers gleaned from overheard scraps of Alliance field healers. He wasn’t a healer himself but whoever the Alliance man was, whatever had happened on the terrace, he still deserved the best honest attempt to save him that they could offer - that was the Pandaren way, and the unspoken oath that all in the Kun-Lai peaks lived by. Ren, outsider though he might be, could do no less.


	3. A Lost Cub

The promised snow didn’t disappoint; before Ren sought his own bed for the night it was coming down thick and heavy, not the light dusting of the day before but a steady blanket that covered the whole of the Frostfall way station. Ren shook it off his cloak and out of his fur, banked the fire in his tent hut for a steady burn, and fell asleep to the heavy silence, as though the entire world was listening with bated breath to the muffled soft pat-a-pat of falling snow.   
  
The sound of industrious digging was what woke him in the morning, combined with the snuffling, sharp pitched sound of Grummle voices. Brother Snowmelt and Cousin Smallpebble greeted him cheerfully when he poked his head out to squint at the flat white and equally flat gray of the world; the sun was up, though barely, and the snow was still falling. The drifts were heaped up around the station tents, waist deep in some places and well over the height of the average Grummle, but the small beings were out, armed with stout gloves on their long fingered hands and sturdy small shovels, carving out paths between the doorways and tramping down the walkways. Shivering, Ren bid them good morning and retreated to build up the embers of his fire, heating water for tea and putting a pot of rice on to cook.    
  
The Quian Shui he had harvested the day before had weathered the night on the low bench where Ren kept his tools, its fronds spread and relaxed in the quiet of the tent. He carefully scooped another bowlful of snow around it and set his gathering gloves to soak in a prepared tub of oil and crumbled charcoal ash while he waited for the rice to be ready. He had just sat down with a bowl and a cup of tea when a voice called from outside.   
  
It was Feng, the older male still yawning and wrapped in his heaviest cloak. Ren invited him in, offering him a cup of tea that Feng took gratefully. “Hard work for these old bones, and the cold doesn’t help,” he sighed, settling himself on a cushion beside Ren’s fire. “The Grummles are predicting it’ll keep falling through tomorrow - we’re going to be up to our chins in it before it’s done. Ancestor’s willing the traders will get through before winter sets in. Did you get that message you wanted sent?”   
  
“Yes, but I’m not expecting a reply any time soon,” Ren said wryly. He offered Feng a bowl of rice but the mistweaver shook his head, holding out his cup for a refill.   
  
“Never really want food after a healing,” he admitted, “but if you melted all of that out there I could probably drink it, if Jun didn’t inhale it first. Feel as parched as dried leather.”    
  
“How is the patient?” Ren asked curiously.    
  
“Alive,” Feng said promptly. “Which is good enough for now. Pai Su and Ling are sitting with him right now.” Pai Su was Jun’s mother, Mei Fan’s elder sister and an accomplished healer in her own right. Ling Stormshot was the other mistwalker in the community, rounding out the shifts that they could spell each other with through the day.   
  
Feng shook his head slightly, producing a wrapped bundle from under his cloak. “Part of what I wanted to speak with you about,” he said apologetically. “These are the things we took off the male yesterday. Not much - clothes, a few trinkets. It’s all unfamiliar to me, but would any of it be useful to you?”   
  
Ren set his bowl aside, taking the bundle with pricked ears. “It might,” he admitted. “The Alliance wear insignia - if he was a soldier in a company it might tell us which one and what type.” He untied the burlap Feng had wrapped around the items, letting them spill across his knees.    
  
He wasn’t sure what he had expected. The sturdy blue of an Alliance tabard, most likely, with scraps of leather or mail armor. The blue and white and pale gold fabric that tumbled out over his hands was ripped, bloodstained and torn, but lighter than he had thought, and richer; linen and silk, tight woven and fine.    
  
Ren’s first thought was of the mages, the Kirin Tor and even the mercenaries, magic users who eschewed the use of armor, weaving their defenses into the very fabric of their sometimes ornate clothes. He inhaled deeply, but the scent of blood and an acrid sickening smell reminiscent of death and rot made him sneeze violently. “Sha,” Feng said, his own nose wrinkled. “There’ll be no getting that out.”   
  
Ren winced, ears flat and suddenly unwilling to touch the clothes more than necessary. He had seen the manifestation of Sha before, to his regret; it had been the final straw in his break from communicating with the Alliance, watching the hatred and bloodshed between the Alliance and the Horde draw forth the demons of the heart, monsters made manifest from Pandaria soil to wreck destruction on a land that wasn’t theirs. He grimaced and lifted the scraps of fabric carefully with his claw tips, touching them like he would have a poisonous or prickly herb as he shook them out.    
  
And there… there was the somber head of the Stormwind lion, picked out in gold thread against rich blue silk. Ren shook the surcoat out across the mats, frowning. It was no soldier’s gear, that was certain. A magic user, almost certainly, but he couldn’t tell what type with the scent of Sha overlaying everything - not even the musty scent of warlock magic was discernible past that. Still, the fabric _felt_ subtly heavier than it should - spellcloth, surely, but even among the mages only the most well to do wove their field clothes in silk. A ranking magic user, perhaps, but the Alliance rarely put pure mages in command during a skirmish, and the Kirin Tor would not have worn Stormwind’s insignia.    
  
Piece by piece, the outfit took shape - the silk surcoat, linen tunic and trousers, solid boots that had seen wear, and a length of gold silk that he at first thought was a belt until he shook loose a smooth leather belt from amongst the tangle. The Stormwind lion was there, too, molded into the steel of the belt buckle, and picked out in more gold thread at the dirt stained cuffs of the tunic.    
  
Another twist of burlap spilled out several items - a utilitarian knife, no longer then Ren’s palm but, he supposed, suitably sized for the human, and two tiny bands of metal; rings, Ren realized, small human rings that barely fit over the tip of his smallest fingers. The first was a smooth mithril band with a cap of some dark green stone - darker than the fine transluscent jade that the mines to the south produced - and inlaid with chips of red gems, though if they were magic in nature the cloying scent of the Sha disguised it. The second rolled into Ren’s palm, heavy gold with a single blue stone, and he held his breath as he turned it over.    
  
Feng was leaning forward, ears pricked up in mild curiosity. “An insignia?”   
  
“Of a sort,” Ren said, the words rough in his abruptly dry throat. He twisted the ring around between his claws but it remained unchanged, shining gold and sapphire, the crest picked out in fine carving. When he glanced up Feng was looking slightly alarmed and Ren, with effort, righted his laid back ears. “It’s the mark of the king,” he said. The word came out in Common from long usage, making Feng frown in incomprehension, and Ren grimaced. “The crest of the house of the Emperor,” he explained.    
  
Feng’s ears shot back in shock. “A member of their Emperor’s household? No common soldier, then.”   
  
“No,” Ren agreed, frowning. “I have heard that sometimes highly ranked commanders or those doing the direct will of the Emperor are gifted such rings…” he spread his hands, shaking his head. “I have stood with the Alliance in the past, but I was never highly ranked or granted more than the briefest audience within the court.”   
  
Feng nodded, scratching at the ruff of fur that grew along the edges of his jaw. “And these outsiders… the Shado-Pan sent out warning about them, but the Grummles tell that they have sought out and spoken to the Celestials. An emissary of their Emperor, perhaps?”   
  
Ren paused, mouth open and throat dry as Feng’s words sent the pieces crashing into place. With shaking hands he reached out, snatching up the golden length of silk he had thought was a belt and smoothing it in a diagonal across the surcoat. No… not a belt, the one fastening far too wide to wrap a human’s bone thin waist. A sash, though, worn from shoulder to hip - yes, that fit.    
  
“Oh, Ancestors have mercy,” he groaned softly, letting the rings tumble onto the pile of cloth. “I need to see the man.”   
  
“He’s not awake,” Feng warned, pushing himself up when Ren scrambled to his feet. “And in no condition to answer anything.”   
  
“Not talk to,” Ren clarified, grabbing up his cloak as he headed to the door. “Just see. I wasn’t paying attention last night, except to the wounds. I didn’t think… stupid!” A gust of snow laden wind hit them as soon as he unfastened the door, making him lay his ears back and growl. “And the message already sent, no chance of another… I should have paid better attention!”    
  
Feng hurried after him through the dug out pathways, the Grummles’ early morning work already dusted by a fresh layer of snow. Ren shook it off himself irritably when they reached the healers’ hut, dropping his cloak just inside the door.   
  
Ling, a charcoal and gray female only a little older than Jun, was seated beside the heaped pallet where the injured human was laid, but her eyes were closed and her hands still, turned up on her knees in meditation and not active healing. Pai Su, taller and grayer than Mei Fan, started to rise from where she was busy with pots beside the fire, but Feng went to her with a small shake of his head, speaking softly.

Ren sank down to the ground beside the pallet, reaching out with a not entirely steady hand to touch the wounded human’s face. He was pale and bruised, his face above the blankets a study in stark splotches of white and deep purple, but someone had washed the blood away. Ren’s facial recognition of most humans was as rudimentary as most humans claimed to be about Pandaren - they all looked the same, with their small eyes and tiny flat noses and mouths, no fur to speak of. The males were capable of growing beards but this one was smooth cheeked, his skin fragile and warm beneath Ren’s fingertips.    
  
His face wasn’t familiar, particularly not in lax unconsciousness, but it had been… what? Three years or more? Time enough for a cub to hit their growth, for a human youth to spring up into a man, and Ren touched gentle claws to the pale strands of the human’s hair, where it lay cropped short and flattened to his skull with sweat.    
  
“Do you know him?” Ling asked softly. When Ren glanced up the mistweaver’s eyes were open, her curious gaze on him.    
  
“I don’t know,” he admitted. Three years, a passing audience, a day spent in service to the Stormwind crown escorting a round cheeked youth, barely more than a child cub playing at royal duties, for an afternoon. He could remember that boy’s face, but he couldn’t see it in the painfully still face of the injured man before him. “Could he be woken?”   
  
Ling’s ears flicked back. “Is it that important?” she asked, disapproving.   
  
Feng, sitting down at Ren’s side, Pai Su beside him, came to his rescue. “Lorewalker Ren says he may be a member of the outlander Emperor’s household. Someone of importance.”   
  
Pai Su huffed softly, sounding for a moment like her sister. “He is injured, first and foremost,” she said. “What he is besides that is not so important as his health.”   
  
“Agreed,” Ren said hastily, “but if I am right… it could be _very_ important. Please - it doesn’t need to be for long. Only to see if he can tell us his name.”   
  
Ling’s ears were flat, with a stubborn cant to them, but Pai Su hesitated. “Maybe just for a moment,” she allowed. “If you can, Ling? We need to get another dose down him, and it would be easier if he could swallow.”   
  
The mistweaver grumbled a bit but nodded reluctantly, sitting up straighter and flexing her fingers. “I can wake him enough to swallow on his own,” she agreed. “If he responds beyond that… maybe the Ancestors will it, maybe not. I will not put that stress on him just for questions.”   
  
“I understand,” Ren assured her, pressing his palms together in a short bow from the waist. “Thank you.”   
  
Pai Su hurried back to the fire, mixing a small cup of something that smelled earthy and green all at once, equal parts warmed water and snow to make it easy for swallowing. When she returned Ren ceded his place at the man’s side to her, shifting to kneel at the head of the pallet while the two females tended to their patient.    
  
Ling exhaled softly, her eyes closing as her hands stretched out, pushing, pulling, beginning the smooth flow across the wounded man’s body that would strengthen and engage his chi. Feng’s fingers twitched slightly, but he kept his hands on his knees; the mistweavers would take shifts through the day, and he would need his strength for later in the evening. Ren watched, holding his own breath as the human’s breaths deepened, the pace changing to match Ling’s motions until a short, sharp cough caught somewhere in his chest.   
  
Pai Su was already there, the man’s head cupped gently in her hand as she raised him slightly up. Ren saw the human’s eyelids flicker as Pai Su coaxed him to take a mouthful of the cup she held to his lips; only part of it ended up in his mouth, but his throat moved reflexively and Pai Su hummed quiet encouragement. She pressed him to take another sip, then another, until the cough caught him again and she settled him back against the furs, wiping his face and throat dry with a soft cloth.    
  
Ren swallowed, leaning forward when Pai Su nodded briefly to him. His throat was dry and it made the Common words in his mouth rougher than they should be. “Prince Anduin?” he said softly. “Your highness, can you hear me?”   
  
Part of him - a large part, because dear gods he would rather his guess and all the complications it brought with it were wrong - hoped that the words would elicit no response. That the man would not reply, either because he couldn’t or because the words were naught but nonsense to him. For a long few moments it seemed the Celestials heard his prayer and took mercy on him, the only sound the injured man’s breaths, but then the human’s eyelids twitched, his breath hitching.   
  
Blue eyes, as clear as a spring day sky, an utterly unknown color to all of the myriad races that inhabited Pandaria where eyes range from a dark brown that was nearly black to shades of green or gold. The color was all the more striking set within the dark bruises on the man’s face, bright and shocking despite the bloodshot web that marred one of them.    
  
The color, though, was only a thin sliver around pupils blown large, which only responded sluggishly, in fits and starts, as the man tried in vain to focus. Those impossibly blue eyes roved blindly, slipping over and past them, the corners of the man’s mouth tightening in wordless pain.   
  
Ren grimaced, running the lightest of claws over the hair at the man’s temples. “Your highness?”   
  
Another flicker, his words pulling the man’s eyes open as though on reflex, and Ren bit back a groan of defeat. “Your highness, I don’t know if you remember me…”   
  
“…Ren…”   
  
His name, in the flattened vowels of a Stormwind accent, froze Ren in his tracks, his heart giving a painful thump of surprise. Three years since he had last stepped foot in Stormwind, surely the cub wouldn’t have remembered one bodyguard out of countless when he had only served for one day. The injured man coughed, the sound harsh and tearing, muscles across his chest tightening as though he would lift a hand made heavy in splints and bandages, the limb immobile and useless.    
  
Pai Su slipped a hand beneath his neck, lifting and turning him slightly to help ease the cough. The man subsided, his breath a rough rasp through his throat. “Lina,” he murmured, his eyes sliding shut. “Tell her… sorry…”   
  
Another coughing spasm, thick and wet, and there was blood on the man’s lips. Ren, his ears flat, shoved himself backwards before Pai Su had time to bark at him to move, his own heart pounding as he watched healer and mistweaver spring into action in smooth coordination. Ling’s hands skimmed through the air, fingers reaching and hooking, pressing her own chi into the injured man as he continued to cough. Her brows were drawn down, eyes held tight and ears flat, her mouth pressed thin in concentration. Pai Su held the man’s head, tipping him to help clear the fluids from his throat, and bent to press her ear to his chest, her fingers moving lightly over his torso as she tested bone structure.    
  
Several more coughs left the man breathing easier but erased any hope of lucidity; he sagged back against the furs limply, body exhausted by the brief convulsions. Pai Su dipped a cloth in the dregs of the medicine she had dosed him with, wiping his face and mouth clean. “Whole,” she said, though she was frowning, the tip of her long tail rippling fitfully against her ankles. “The bones are whole, but the inside is raw.”

  
Ling made a few more sweeping paths over the human’s body, the rush of her chi tingling heavily through the air, before letting her hands drop. “We are _not_ ,” she said firmly, “doing that again.”   
  
“No,” Feng agreed. “He needs rest, and the mends to his ribs are too new to be shaken like that.” The older male looked at Ren, his ears held politely up but straining at the tips where they wanted to spread wide in surprise. “He knew you.”   
  
“I…” At a loss for words, Ren scrubbed his palms over his face, absently running his fingers along the braided plait of his hair. “I… don’t know. I can’t imagine that he would, but…”   
  
“He knew your name,” Pai Su pointed out. “I don’t know the rest of what he said, but that was definitely your name.” She tucked the furs around her patient, gently wiping his lax face again and smoothing the short strands of his hair back. “What you were saying, _’Your highness’_ ,” she said, the common words awkward in her mouth, her nose wrinkling. “Is that his name, then?”   
  
Ren choked back a humorless laugh, absently pulling his braid over his shoulder to worry at the end of it with his claws. “No,” he corrected. “It’s a polite form of address. Very polite.” He exhaled, shoulders slumping, aware of their eyes on him and unable to look away from the still, battered form on the furs.    
  
“Ancestors have mercy,” he sighed, defeated. “No… his name is Anduin Llane Wrynn. He is the son of their Emperor, the sole cub of the late Empress, and heir to the throne.”   



	4. Lorewalker Tales

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _First of the new chapters! Description of the Divine Bell borrowed from Wowpedia._
> 
> * * * * *

Pai Su filled Ren’s cup and pushed a bowl of rice porridge into his hands. She gave the blanket across his shoulder a tug as she rose to her feet, pulling it higher up his back with a motherly pat. “Eat something,” she admonished. “Bad news is best shared on a full stomach.”   
  
Ren managed a wan smile for her. Pai Su was a motherly as her sister Mei Fan was brisk; across the room, on the other side of the center brazier, Mei Fan’s tail was twitching with barely contained impatience where she sat next to Feng, her hands occupied with reworking Mai’s braids. They were all there; the Frostflowers, Pai Su’s mate Baohao Thunderpaw and Jun, still yawning and nose buried in her teacup. The Snowbrush family, Shen-Tao and his mate Lien, their cubs scattered around them, the youngest tucked into a sling against Lien’s chest. The Grummles, Brother Snowmelt and Cousin Smallpebble, were perched on a heaped pile of grain bags that had blankets draped over them; part of the large healing tent was used for communal storage and its central space made it the ideal location for something like calling together the inhabitants of the waystation.    
  
The door flap was pulled aside, letting in a swirling gust of still falling snow along with Huang, who hastily secured the flap behind him before sweeping back his cloak and shaking off the snow. “Sorry to be late,” he said, claws combing frost melt out of his beard. “The cubs were fussing; Reng-Yu’s sitting watch with them. This isn’t going to take long, is it?”   
  
Like choreographed motion, most eyes turned to Ren. He winced, struggling to keep his ears up when they wanted to lay flat. “It won’t take long, no,” he assured Huang, then turned to the rest of them, setting his bowl aside and taking a breath as he drew himself up. “You’ll have to forgive me,” he told them, spreading his hands in apology. “My skills lie in the written word, not the telling. You all know of the latest rescue, the outlander.”   
  
Most of them turned to look at where Ling still sat beside the human’s pallet, monitoring him. “Scrawny little things, aren’t they?” Huang remarked. Shen-Tao snorted and the cubs giggled. Ren shook his head.   
  
“Small in stature only,” he told them soberly. “If we are correct, he is the son of the Emperor of the Alliance.”   
  
Shen-Tao sat up sharply, ears flicking. He was the way station trader, used to bartering in goods and coin, but also information, and had the most outside news of all of them. “The one who petitioned the Celestials?” he asked sharply. Around the room ears pricked up; it was news to some of them, and several voices asked what he meant and who had done what.    
  
Ling hissed at them all to keep their voices down - it was still a tent of healing. Ren waited until they had all settled again and nodded. “Yes, the one who petitioned the Celestials to open the Vale of Eternal Blossom.” He laced his claws together in his lap, holding his hands tightly. “I was not there at the time, but I know the tale, and as of now the gates to the Vale stand open with the Celestials’ blessing, to both Pandaren and outlander alike. Because of one Emperor’s son.”   
  
He had to raise a hand to remind them to be quiet after that, as excited murmurs broke out around the room. “That isn’t all of it,” he told them, taking another deep breath.   
  
“In the reign of the Thunder King,” he said when the room was quiet once more, letting his voice slip into the rolling cadence of a Lorewalker teacher, “the Mogu spellweavers created a work of great power and gifted it to the Emperor. It was cast from the maker’s flesh, shaped by stars’ fire, and bound in the breath of the darkest shadow. Its voice could shake the world and call to the heavens, drawing upon hatred and anger in the heart of the Emperor’s warriors to fuel their ferocity, while striking fear and doubt into his enemies.”   
  
Ren let his breath out, watching as they listened. “In awe of the majesty of the gift, the Thunder King named it the voice of the gods, Shenquing, the Divine Bell.”   
  
Across the room, Feng and Mei Fan, both first responders the day before upon the Emperor’s Reach, stiffened. Jun hadn’t moved, but her ears were canted towards Ren, and even Huang’s normally ready smile had slid away. “After the Thunder King’s death the Divine Bell was sealed away to await his rebirth,” Ren said quietly. “And as you may have heard, there was a shattered bell where it had no place being, upon Emperor’s Reach, where the rescue was found. Coincidence, perhaps, nothing but old tales, but the part between that you could not know is what the Lorewalkers were speaking of when I left the Vale.”   
  
“Tell us,” Feng said firmly. His ears were flat, expression grave.    
  
Ren sighed, clasping his hands once more to keep his claws from worrying at everything else around him. “The outlanders have two predominant factions,” he admitted, “and their war has been going for several generations. Young, by our standards, we who have stood against the Mogu and Klaxxi for thousands of years, but in youth the blood runs even hotter. Brought together in this land, the Alliance and the Horde have spawned massive outpourings of Sha in their fight against each other. The Jade Temple paid a heavy price for their folly. And yet, the Celestials have found worth in some of them, enough to open the Vale and give them refuge.”   
  
He glanced up, meeting the eyes of those around him. “The news that was whispered in the Vale at the time I left was that the outland fight had lead them to seeking weapons here, in Pandaria. That the unthinkable had come to pass and Shenquing had been unearthed, brought once more into the light of day.” He took a breath, ears aching from the strain of holding them upright. It was hard to give voice to, hard to think of the force he had once served with, males and females he had fought beside, and relate it back to the monstrosity of the battle that had razed the Jade Temple nearly to the ground and left the very earth around it saturated in the nightmare of Sha. Or of a curious cub he had spent a day protecting as the princely emissary who had stood before the Celestial gods of Pandaria and successfully pleaded his case.    
  
“The last I had heard,” Ren admitted, “was that the Alliance held the Divine Bell.”   
  
Feng had gathered Mai to him as though she were half her age, tucking his cub against his side between Mei Fan and himself. “The Emperor’s Reach,” he said flatly, “was drenched in Sha. The bodies we found were saturated by shadow, the whole terrace reeked of it.”   
  
“The bell was broken,” Jun pointed out a bit sharply. “The pieces nearly crushed the one life we saved.”   
  
“Why would he even be there?” Shen-Tao asked. “What I heard, he spoke against violence when he stood before the Celestials. If it was a battle on the terrace…”   
  
“It was,” Mei Fan said. She glared Shen-Tao down, her tail twitching. “This one was the only one without weapon mark on him.”   
  
“He is - was - no warrior,” Ren interjected quietly. “When I had the chance to meet him he was trained as a priest of the Light.”   
  
“You said yourself that it was years ago, when he was a cub,” Feng said sourly.

“Three years,” Ren countered weakly. It felt familiar but wrong to be protesting on behalf of the Alliance once more, the feeling sitting ill in his stomach. “Not that long.”   
  
“Long enough,” Jun said quietly. “Long enough, but…” she shook her head, draining her cup and handing it to her father to refill. “It isn’t our judgement to make. He’s wounded, that’s all I care about.”   
  
“I would never say we shouldn’t heal him,” Feng said, stung, the fur along his jaw bristling. “But we have to think of our own safety as well. There are cubs in this station, and none of us are fighters. If these outlanders are so arrogant, so _foolish_ , as to think they can control the Sha, so reckless and disrespectful as to unearth the Divine Bell…”   
  
“The Jade Temple was destroyed,” Shen-Tao said reluctantly, his ears lowered. His mate, Lien, wrapped her arms around her youngest, cradling the cub to her breasts. “That’s what they said - the traders who came up from the Jade Forest, through Binan. Whatever the outlanders did, it… they said it was the Sha of Anger. That it towered over the temple and struck the dragon down.”   
  
“Yu’lon lives,” Ren said firmly. That, at least, he knew for fact. “But the temple was… badly damaged.”   
  
“He’s only one,” Baohao noted in his deep rumble voice. “And not like he’ll be up anytime soon, by the look of it. What can one wounded stranger do?”   
  
Mei Fan’s ears were low and flat on her skull, her tail still shivering clear to the tip. “It’s not the wounded male himself, it’s _who_ he _is_. An Emperor’s son…”   
  
“All the more reason to heal him, then,” Jun pointed out. “His son delivered back safe and hale would garner more favor with this Emperor, wouldn’t you think?”   
  
“No one,” Feng said with a firm grimness, “is saying anything about _not_ healing him. Of course we will. But until we know if he was the one to attempt to use Shenquing, and what he was doing on the Emperor’s Reach, I propose treating this with a certain level of caution. An immobile patient is still a patient.”   
  
Huang scratched at his chin, eyeing the bandage and blanket swathed form on the pallet. “Looks pretty immobile to me.”   
  
Several of them laughed and even Feng’s mouth twitched at the corner. “You said he trained as a priest,” he noted, looking at Ren. Ren nodded and Feng sighed. “If their priests are like ours, they can do more than heal.” He held up a hand before anyone could protest again. “I’m not suggesting silencing him. We need to be able to pour doses down him on a regular basis, not be blocking his mouth up. But caution, particularly if he looks lucid enough to speak, is necessary.”   
  
Heads around the room nodded. “He’s had strong luck so far,” Cousin Smallpebble interjected, sniffing. “But that doesn’t make him _our_ luck. Better safe than sorry.”   
  
“And his family, Emperor or no, is going to want to know where he is,” Lien pointed out. She reached out to snag the back of one of her cub’s tunics, pulling the boy into her lap. “Anyone would.”   
  
“Guessing that’s where we come in,” Huang said wryly. “Reng-yu’s gonna throw a fit, and there ain’t any birds flying in this weather. When it clears up in a couple days, maybe, sure, but not ‘til then.”   
  
“The Lorewalkers will at least know that the Bell was seen on the terrace,” Ren said, sighing. “I sent that note before the storm. Ancestors willing, the senior Lorewalkers will put the pieces together if the Emperor is searching for his son.”   
  
“That’s all we can do, then,” Pai Su said, brushing her hands over her skirts as she rose to her feet. “And if we’re all agreed to be sensible, then I have a patient to see to.”   
  
Mei Fan sighed and rose as well, giving herself a quick all over shake as she joined her sister. “Here - how is he taking the red leaf?” she asked gruffly. That seemed to be a signal; the rest of them began to get up, leaving in small clusters, heads bent together as they talked softly.    
  
Huang clapped Ren on the shoulder as he left. “Let me talk to Reng-yu,” he offered with a quick grin. “Better me than you, yeah? Least I can soften him up first.”    
  
Ren pulled up a smile for the other male. “Thank you. I’m not _trying_ to irritate him, I swear.”   
  
Huang waved him off. “It’s not you; he fusses over those birds as much as the cubs, I swear. We’ll let you know when it’s clear enough to send a message through.” He gave Ren’s shoulder another thump and flipped his hood up before ducking out.   
  
Settling down beside Ren with a muted snort, Feng reached past him for the pot that was warming over the brazier, refilling his cup. “Interesting times, I suppose,” he said sourly.   
  
“They are that, yes,” Ren sighed, glancing over to where the healers were clustered around the pallet. “My mother always used to use that as a curse.”   
  
“Smart woman,” Feng grunted. Ren, grimacing and thinking of his mother who had despaired of anything to do with the greater world beyond the turtle shell, shook his head and held his tongue. He had fled the peace of Shen-Zin Su in search of adventure, little more than a hot headed cub himself. Now, years later, he was more willing to admit that there was a grain of truth in the curse. There was, he had found, more to life than grand events and great adventure and the irony of it catching up to him when he hadn’t been looking for it just made his fur bristle with an unsettled feeling in his stomach.    
  
Ren glanced at the still form of the blanket and bandage swathed human on the pallet and grimaced, feeling his ears draw back as he remembered the piercing sky blue of hazy eyes that had looked right through him.


	5. Waking

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Second of the new chapters and FINALLY things start HAPPENING!_
> 
> * * * * *

Ren shifted the weight across his back with a grimace, hefting it higher across his shoulders before turning his steps towards the trail that lead up to the way station. The marker flags still shifted gamely in the wind, their edges weighted down in snow and ice and their sluggish movement more like the annoyed twitch of a tiger’s tail than the whipping snap of a serpent’s. 

It hadn’t _stopped_ snowing. 

Which wasn’t entirely true; there were breaks in the flurries, hours or once an entire afternoon of clear grey skies and no falling flakes, but the world remained still the way it did when all small sensible things were hibernating and by nightfall the snow began drifting down again. Their best shoveling efforts left the paths of Frostfall itself well up over Ren’s ankles, and beyond the little cluster of dwellings even the non-drifted areas had caked snow past his knees and nearly up to his hips in a few memorable spots. For a Pandaren who had grown up in the temperate ocean streams that Shen-Zin Su favored, Ren was starting to have a new appreciation for the human phrase of “hell freezing over”. 

Shen-Tao was chewing his claws ragged over the state of his absent caravans, but the rest of the inhabitants of the way station had shrugged philosophically and thrown themselves into digging in for the winter. It had left Ren at something of a loss, unsure where to lend a hand, until he had overheard Lien fussing at Reng-Yu about how the hawkmaster ought not to be out hunting in his current shape. _That_ Ren could do, and offered his services, which had seen him out on the trails at dawn for the past five day until he was fairly certain his claws might freeze off despite the thick wrappings in his boots. 

He had yet to come back empty handed, though, and the way station smokehouse had been kept lit processing the snow hares, wild birds, and occasional sturdy mountain goat like the one he was currently lugging back. Grummles, herbalists, and older cubs alike had been out stockpiling wood, brush, roots, the last of the winter greens, and even the dry dung of the goats which burned in a pinch. They would be very short on luxuries by the end of the season if the caravan didn’t come through, Shen-Tao had admitted, tugging at his own ears, but they were well stocked enough in the necessities. No one would go hungry or cold, but they might all be very tired of boiled porridge by spring. 

It was only mid day, the goat a lucky find where it had wandered down from the higher rocky ledges in search of shelter. If the tiny flecks of falling snow stayed light and if one of the others were available to help string the kill up he might have enough time yet to go back out, perhaps dig up a brace of hares. He had seen tracks along the north trail the day before and could remember where he thought the burrow was. 

It wasn’t much different from being sent out on a supply hunt for an Alliance camp, really, but the feel beneath Ren’s skin was a far cry from the aggravation than he had felt towards the Alliance at the end. Less waste and more gratitude, for starters; nothing he brought back went unused, the blood and organs to make sausage, the meat to the smokehouse, the fur and hides stretched for curing, and even the bones were dried for the fires after the marrow had been boiled out for broth. It was a warm feeling, to watch the fruit of his hunts piled in the station supplies, or when he caught Lien awarding fresh seared bits of meat to her older cubs when they came tumbling back in with collected brush and greens. It felt more like home, during the tail end of the harvest season, and it made him glad to offer help where he could. 

Mai was tending the smoke fires when Ren shouldered the door flap of the little hut open. There were strings of fresh pink fish fillets laid out on woven racks above all the fire pits; Huang loved to fish as much as his mate liked the hunt and when he wasn’t sitting watch the large male had been busy down at the small lake that spilled into the valley far below, pulling line after line of fish from the ice. Feng and Mei-Fan had forbidden Mai to hunt on account of her age, but that had only given her access to Huang’s more patient style of fish hunting instead and in the early morning the two could be found thick as thieves on the water’s edge. 

Mai tugged the thick woven scarf she had wrapped over her nose and mouth down to give Ren a bright, delighted grin when she saw the goat. “Oh, excellent! Mother was hoping for something fresh - not fish - for later.”

Ren let the carcass slide off his shoulder onto the little wooden platform where most of the butchering was done and began stripping off his own scarf and hat. The smoke in the hut made his eyes water, but the smell set his stomach to growling. “Is there some sort of occasion?”

Mai was reaching for a set of heavy iron hooks to hang the kill from the tent support beams. “She was fussing about making broth,” she explained, going up on her toes to awkwardly set the hook. Ren took the others from her without comment, his reach passing hers without really trying. Mai flashed him a grateful smile. “For the patient. He’s getting stronger, they expect him to wake soon.”

Ren started; the last he had heard the human's fever had broken two days before but there had been no sign of waking; perhaps the healers had decided to induce consciousness. Mai didn't notice his pause, busy rolling up her sleeves and tying on a thick leather apron before she reached for the skinning knives. "He's so thin, like someone took a Grummle and tried to stretch them to our height. Are all of his race like that? Do you think he speaks Pandaren? Can you translate for him if he doesn't? That would be terrible, waking up among strangers and not being able to speak to them."

Used to Mai's volley of questions, Ren let her pause for breath before he tried to answer. "It would be, yes, but I speak the human language. And I imagine he speaks some Pandaren - he spoke to the Celestials."

"But wouldn't the Celestials, in their wisdom, speak all languages, even the Outlander tongues?" Mai asked, ears canted in surprise. Ren had to suppress a laugh; she was a bright and curious cub, much like the youngest Lorewalker initiates, always asking.

"I suppose they do," he agreed, reaching to steady the carcass as Mei expertly slit the skin open. "Yu'lon spoke equally with the Jinyu and Hozen, and never hesitated when the outland strangers came to the Temple speaking their common tongue." 

Mai turned wide eyes on him and Ren grinned, fully aware that the next hour while they skinned and dressed the goat was going to be spent answering an endless stream of questions about the time he had been at the Jade Temple when he had first taken lessons with the Lorewalkers. The lush forests of the southwestern lowlands were just as strange to her as anything else beyond the Kun-Lai summits, and it made the work go quickly while he spun her tales about the Jinyu villages with their never-frozen pools of deep water and the Jinyu shepherds with their flocks of fish and crabs, or the thick bamboo forests that rose to towering heights and spread their canopy over the sky, while tigers lurked in the shadows. 

They were cleaning up the work surface and themselves - every fire had a pot of snow melting next to it at all times, water was the one thing they would never be scarce on so long as the fires burned - when the flap to the tent opened once more, letting in a cold burst of fresh air that stirred the smoke in heavy swirls. "Mai, have you seen-" Mei Fan broke off when she saw Ren and the cleanly butchered goat, her ears lifting. She was dressed only for a quick jaunt between tents, wrapped in a thick cloak but having left off hat and gloves. "Lorewalker! I was just going to ask for you."

"He brought in a goat, Mother," Mai said. "I kept some of the bones aside for broth." 

"Clever cub," Mei Fan said with warm approval, wrapping an arm around Mai's shoulders to give her a quick squeeze. As brusque as she could be when it came to her patients, she was an attentive mother who always made time for her youngest; Mai, as commonly happened with first and last born litters, had been a single cub with no siblings, and both of her parents doted on her.

Mei Fan accepted the bones from Mai, wrapped in a scrap of skin too small and thin to bother curing, and dropped a kiss on Mai's ears before beckoning Ren to follow her from the tent. "He'll wake soon," she said without preamble, leading the way along the path to the healing tent. The snow was coming down thicker; Ren shook it from his ears and pulled his hood up, tucking his hands into the folds of his cloak. "Feng, Jun, and Ling conferred and agree - they eased his rest while he was feverish, but it would do more harm than good to continue doing it now." She inclined her head briefly to Ren, the snowflakes caught in her russet and grey hair falling away in tiny avalanches as she flicked her ears. "The hunting you've done is a great help, Lorewalker, but we'll need you close for awhile, until you can speak to him."

"Of course," Ren agreed promptly; the Pandaren of the outpost were no more eager to deal with an outsider they couldn't talk to than their patient would probably be eager to be incapacitated amongst strangers. "He's doing better, then?"

"As well as you'd expect for someone more broken than whole," Mei Fan snorted softly, shaking herself all over as they entered the healing tent. It was warm inside, without the eye stinging haze of the smoking hunt, and Ren let himself sigh softly as he unclasped his cloak and hung it up. 

Mei Fan caught his elbow, tugging him towards the central fire, and pushed him down onto the scattered cushions. "Sit," she told him briskly. "And get your foot wraps off; hunting is tiring work, but if you doze off with them on you'll only have wet toes later and that's the last thing you want."

Ren groaned softly, reaching for one foot. She was right, but the moment he had sat down it had leached the momentum from his bones, leaving him feeling heavy and sluggish in the warmth. He stripped off the heavy weight of his boots, unwinding the fleece and oiled wraps that protected his feet, and couldn't suppress a louder groan at the relief as he stretched his toes free, wiggling all eight of them and flexing his claws as he turned his feet towards the welcome heat of the fire. 

Mei Fan chuckled, not unkindly, and dropped down beside Ren, catching one of his ankles in her hands. She pressed her thumbs hard into the arch of his foot, making Ren hiss, and then expertly gave a sharp, quick twist to his toes that caused a series of loud bone pops and made his breath catch on a strangled gasp.

"Lowlander," Mei Fan chided, reaching for his other foot. "You wrap too tight and thick, no wonder your feet are stiff and sore." She cracked that foot as well and Ren clenched his claws into the cushions rather than flail at the sharp sensation that bordered on pain. It did feel better when she was done, though; he gingerly flexed his toes, reveling in the smoother movement without the cramped hitch he had been growing used to. 

On the far side of the tent, where he was seated beside the patient, Feng chuckled. "Best to let her have her say," he told Ren, which got him a mocking flick of his mate's tail in answer as Mei Fan climbed to her feet and dusted her skirts down. The Mistweaver grinned; the healers had all lost the dry-nosed tired look they had sported during the first days which spoke well for their patient. Feng was just seated at the human's side, close enough to monitor, but his hands were busy not with the energy work of chi but with a large bundle of washed and dried goat fleece that he was working to untangle with the aid of several sharp toothed combs. 

"Here," Mei Fan said. She had gone to rummage in the supplies and came back to shove the parcel of meaty bones, a clay pot, and several different roots at Ren. "Feng thinks soon, but you can make yourself useful in the meantime."

Grinning ruefully, Ren accepted the items, dipping water from the warming kettle to fill the pot and submerge the bones. "Slices or chunks?" he asked, pushing the pot into the coals at the edge of the fire where it could simmer. 

Mei Fan shrugged. "Either. We'll be straining most of it out for broth."

Ren shifted to sit closer beside the radiating heat of the fire, where he could use the flat stones that lined the fire pit as a surface to chop the roots on. Mei Fan settled herself on the other side of the fire; there were long, shallow pans of water there, with thin slats of inner bark wood soaking in them. Ren watched with half an eye as Mei Fan dipped a pale slat out of one pan and a russet one out of another, admiring the craftsmanship as she expertly slit them smaller and then smaller still with a short, sharp blade, before beginning to weave them together into a pattern. 

For awhile the only sounds in the tent were the quiet ones of industry, the snick of the knife blade, the rustle of slats, and the muted click of Feng's combs sliding against each other. Once the roots and several bundles of herbs were simmering with the bones for broth Ren stirred himself, assuring the healers he would be right back, and dragged his boots back on to make the trip to his own tent. He returned with his travel writing desk and a change of footwear, light slippers of soft felted wool that wrapped over his ankles but left his toes and claws mercifully free. A human, he thought with a little amusement, might have called them 'socks', for the knitted coverings they wore on their own bare feet to cushion where they had no fur. 

He made a note of it in a little stitched journal that was tucked among his writing supplies; he had, for the last several days, been idly thinking that a Pandaren primer to the Common trade tongue of Azeroth would be a useful thing. It was entirely possible one or more Lorewalkers were already at work on such a thing, but Ren liked to think his own experience abroad leant a better view to it than what a native Pandaren born Lorewalker could glean from endlessly questioning one of the outsiders in their midst. Those who needed to know, like the Shado-Pan generals who protected Pandaria's borders, had picked up the outland languages quickly enough, leaning on spells when there wasn't time for anything else. If there was going to continue to be trade, however, then a reference for the merchants and tradesmen who didn't have access to a mage's assistance wouldn't go amiss. 

He borrowed a spoonful of water from the melting pot to mix his ink with and opened the writing case across his knees, folding the cleverly jointed lid back to reveal the padded compartments that held his pigments and mixing stones, brushes, ink blocks, and a sheaf of parchment sheets. His notes on Qian Shui, rough written, were buried beneath; Ren pulled them out and set the note sheets up against a portion of the lid that angled, letting him keep one eye on them while he wrote out the actual text he meant to submit to the Seat of Knowledge. 

Mei Fan got up to stir the broth a few times, leaning over his shoulder once to watch Ren's quick, neat brushstrokes with an approving hum and to ask if she might read the portion of the herb's healing properties when he was done. Ren agreed readily - the first herb he had harvested had gone to the station healers in a show of good faith, and his study of it had started with their useage. She left him alone after that and Ren lost himself in the flow of words from his brush tip to the paper.

Movement at the edge of his vision finally made him look up; Feng grinned, the expression tugging at the edges of his grey furred muzzle. "Didn't want to jostle you," he explained, holding out a steaming bowl. The smell from it woke Ren's stomach to a loud complaint; Feng flicked an ear, the grin turning into a frown. "Did you eat at midday?"

Ren started to reply in the affirmative, discovered he couldn't actually remember, and sheepishly set aside his writing to take the bowl with a hastily mumbled thanks. Feng snorted and handed him two of the wide, flat breads that the natives of the Kun-Lai peaks baked on the stones around their hearth fires; ground grains and water, studded with a smattering of herbs. Ren folded one in half and ate it in several large bites, humming in pleasure. 

The bowl contained porridge with soft boiled roots and shreds of cooked meat that Ren suspected had come from the broth pot, and a skewer of grilled smoked goat. He wrapped the second piece of bread around the skewer, eating it with one hand while he cleaned his brushes and put his desk in order, packing it all back away.

Ren was halfway through the contents of the bowl, his mouthfuls having slowed to something less ravenous, when Feng abruptly sat upright from his place on the other side of the fire, putting his own bowl down. Mei Fan made an inquiring noise around her own mouthful, then just as swiftly abandoned her food when Feng stood up to go to their patient. Ren swallowed hastily and scrambled up to join them; Feng's ears were sharply upright as he knelt down beside the palette to sweep an open hand across the man's form.

Mei Fan, her own ears more lowered, beckoned Ren closer. Taking a deeper breath, the food he had just eaten feeling leaden in his stomach, Ren joined her to crouch down beside the still form. The human man was... Ren was not sure he could call it 'better' than he had been days before, the bruising now well set in until the mask around his eyes and shaded over one cheek could almost have been the charcoal color common in Pandaren. The furs heaped on the palette obscured much of the man's injuries but the swelling in his face spoke volumes, distorting the fine boned lined that had been clearer just after the injury. Ren could not accurately identify him by sight alone even then, and his chances now were even less. 

Feng sat back, hands stilling, and nodded encouragement. Ren grimaced and cleared his throat, taking a deeper breath, and repeated his own words of several days prior like an invocation. "Your highness? Can you hear me?"

There was nothing for long moments except the twitch of Mei Fan's tail, which was tapping against Ren's knee in silent agitation. Ren exhaled, leaning forward though he knew, logically, that a handspan or two of proximity was hardly going to make a difference. "Your highness? Prince Anduin?"

The man's breath hitched, head shifting slightly. The slight movement must have pained him because his next breath was a hiss, face contorting in a wince with a sharper inhale, lips forming purposeful shapes. 

Ren lunged past Mei Fan in alarm, pressing his hand firmly over the man's mouth. "No, don't!"

The reaction was swift all around. Mei Fan skittered back with a yelp, her fur bristling. Feng reared up, poised, claws curved into hooks that could catch and drag through a body's chi. Beneath Ren's hands pale blue eyes surged open, bare slits in a swollen mass of blackened bruises, and a cold chill that shivered underneath his fur made him swear and press harder, as hard as he dared, his palm covering half of the man's face and muffling any sound he might try to make. "Prince Anduin, please, you have to listen to me," he begged, his tongue tripping over the words in the human language. "You're safe, you're with friends, but you've been badly injured. Do you understand, your highness? You're injured!"

"Lorewalker," Feng growled. Ren shook his head, shooting a pleading look to the Mistweaver.

"He's in pain," he said quickly. "Priest - his first instinct will be to heal, but he has no reserves." Feng swore, the fur along his skull and jaw still bristling, but settled on his heels and the movement of his hands, when he swept them over the man's prone form, was the familiar smooth sweeps that eased pain and stabilized injuries.

It was true, to an extent - Ren was no priest but he was relatively certain the first syllables on the man's mouth had been a cantrip to ease pain, one that the man ought not be applying to himself when he was barely conscious and as injured as he was. It didn't, however, address the cold chill that was aching up through his hand, a cold that almost burned against his palm. Stupid, he thought to himself - of course the heir to the throne wouldn't be left with no way to protect himself, and priests of the Shadow were as fearsome as priests of the Light were healers, nor was it unknown for one individual to be both.

"You're safe," he repeated in the man's native tongue. "No one will harm you here, but you've been injured. The healers are doing what they can."

He could feel the jaw beneath his hand tighten but the movement that meant speech had stopped. The man was watching him, as well as he could through eyes mostly swollen shut, and after a moment he nodded once in a brief gesture. Ren breathed out slowly and gingerly lifted his hand, well aware that it was unlikely he could move fast enough to silence the man again if the assent didn't mean what he thought it did. 

A wince on the man's mottled face turned into a grimace and then a truly pained cough. Mei Fan, her fur on end and ears flat back, nonetheless knelt at his side with a cup of water and lifted the man's head enough to let him drink. 

"...Where?" It was rough, raspy and dry throated, but the croaked sound unknotted some of the lump of anxiety in Ren's stomach - awake, coherent, and even through the rasp he fancied he could recognize the pitch of the man's voice, remembering the lighter, newly lowered voice of the man-cub Prince he had shadowed for one day. 

"In Kun-Lai, your highness," he said, and watched as the man's eyes shifted, trying to take in the space and figures around him. "One of the outpost villages of the mountains who maintain the trails and help travelers. They saw your flare and brought you back from the Emperor's Reach."

The man took that in, swallowing dryly against another cough, and Mei Fan let him drink another few sips of water though that limited activity alone left him breathing hard. Ren could have predicted a number of questions, but the next word out of the man's mouth sent a bolt of cold down his spine. "Garrosh?"

He had no idea how to answer, and no clue what the heir of the Alliance throne wanted to know of the Horde Warchief. Conflict on the terrace, battle and dead bodies; had the Warchief dismissed all reason and invited full-blown war with a direct attack on the High King's son? Or had the Alliance changed so much that Varian Wrynn had allowed or even condoned his heir's attack on the Warchief? Ren could regretfully envision either scenario, but had heard enough of Garrosh Hellscream's increasingly ruthless and racially divided rule of the Horde to weight chances slightly heavier towards the first. 

"You're safe," he repeated, unsure how else to answer. "There are no Horde here."

The Prince closed his eyes. His brows were pinched tight, carving a deep furrow between them, but the trembling jump of muscle along his jaw had ceased as Feng settled into a rhythm that seemed to ease his pain. Mei Fan touched Ren's wrist, handing him the water cup and gesturing him to take her place with a flick of her claws as she pushed herself up, heading for the fire. Ren grimaced and leaned forward to gingerly slip his hand beneath the man's head; the Prince glanced at him, then focused on the cup, and he drank in eager, parched gulps when Ren tipped the lip of the cup to his mouth. 

A little afraid the man might choke, Ren pulled back after half of the cup. The Prince was gasping, the need for air seemingly secondary to a desperate need for liquids. It made Ren think of how dry the Mistweavers who had pieced him back together had been, the endless cups of tea Feng and Jun had drained between them that first night, and wonder how much magic the man had expended before they ever found him. 

Those pale blue eyes were focused on him again. "...know me," the Prince whispered, voice thin. It was a statement, not a question. "Alliance?"

Ren hesitated, moving gratefully aside as Mei Fan returned with two more cups, one in each hand. "I was," he answered at last, truthfully. "But my place is here, with my people."

The barest dip of the man's chin sufficed in place of a nod. Mei Fan looked pointedly at Ren, holding up one cup. "Broth," she told him, then held up the other, "and a draught to ease the pain and let him sleep normally. Tell him?"

Ren translated, repeating the human words for "broth" and "for pain" both to the Prince, who gave another small nod, and then several times for Mei Fan until she nodded, ears strained upright as she listened. She mouthed the words silently a few times, then set the second cup aside, lifting the first into the man's view and carefully repeating "broth" in the lilting accent that Pandaren syllables gave to outland tongues. 

The Prince drank it with the same too-fast gulps he had taken the water with, though Mei Fan forced him to slow his pace. She repeated the words "for pain" with the second cup and the Prince hesitated, though by the way he licked at his dry lips Ren rather thought he would drink any liquid given to him, regardless of what it was. "Sleep?" he asked.

"Not forced," Ren assured him. "Only normal sleep. You're out of danger, the healers don't want to keep you sedated any longer."

The man frowned, the expression pinched in pain. "What injuries...?" he started, then shook his head slightly, wincing. "Can't feel," he admitted hoarsely. 

Alarmed, Ren relayed that to Mei Fan, whose ears flattened to her head. Pushing Ren aside, she flipped the covers the man was wrapped in back, running the blunt curve of her thumb claw firmly up the sole of one foot, then the other. The Prince jerked, choking on a startled, bitten back gasp. Mei Fan pinched at the backs of his knees, eliciting another jerk, then across the curve of each palm, before she tucked the blankets back around him, satisfied. "The nerves are intact," she said, ears coming back up. "He can't move around the splints, and the feeling to him is probably all one pain, but his reflexes are good."

The Prince seemed to know what she had done, and why, because there was naked relief in his expression despite the involuntary tears that were sliding wetly from the corners of his eyes. "Thank you," he gasped, and then repeated it to Mei Fan, in heavily accented but perfectly understandable Pandaren. 

Ren's ears went back in surprise, as did Mei Fan's and even Feng's, where the Mistweaver was half listening while he worked. "You speak Pandaren?" Ren asked. It wasn't out of the realm of possibility, he supposed; the Prince had, by all accounts, been in Pandaria for months, the better part of a year, and would have had the assistance of Alliance mages to speed learn the language the same as Pandaren in key positions had used to understand the outlanders in their midst. 

"A little," the man replied. He broke off to cough, cutting it off as quickly as he could with a pained wince, then repeated it again in halting Pandaren. "A little. Speak little, hear more." He nodded weakly to the second cup Mei Fan was holding. "To ease the pain?"

The last was rougher than the other words, almost garbled, and Ren's ears spread wider in amazement. 'Hear more' indeed - the man was repeating the words gleaned from listening to them which took a quick wit and good ears even at the best of times, never mind in one well distracted by pain. He remembered a sharp cub, one who watched and listened and put pieces together readily, but he wondered if, even then, the boy Prince had known and heard and seen more than he let on to the adults around him. 

The Prince drank the second cup without hesitation, then asked, in his stilted Pandaren, for more water. Mei Fan gave him two cups, making him drink them slowly. "That's enough for now," she said firmly, settling him back against the pillow. "You'll make yourself sick."

He frowned, then glanced back to Ren for clarification. "Sick?"

"Sick," Ren translated into the human language. "Too much, too fast."

The Prince nodded weakly, letting his eyes sag shut. His breathing slipped into a slower, even pace not two beats later and Mei Fan nodded to herself. "Asleep," she said softly. "The body knows to heal itself, it will take every chance it can."

"Which is every time the pain eases enough to let him sleep," Feng agreed. He lowered his hands, rolling his shoulders back and flicking his fingers to smooth his own chi. "I didn't want to block too much, or he really wouldn't be able to feel anything."

"We'll wake him when Jun takes her shift for another dose," Mei Fan decided. "Every shift start, and midway, for water and broth and a half strength cup of herbs. It should be enough for the dryness and to keep the pain low enough he can sleep." She glanced at Ren, ears flicking. "How much does he understand?"

"I'm not sure," Ren admitted. "Probably more than he's letting on, but he wasn't sure of 'pain' or 'sick'. If you speak slow and keep it simple he should be able to understand enough."

"That's certainly easier than we thought," Mei Fan sighed, relieved. "I'll tell the others."

"Saves you from having to camp out here day in and out while we all learn the basics," Feng said with the ghost of a grin, nudging Ren.

"We'll still need some," Mei Fan said with a sniff. "I can't exchange shadow puppets with someone who can't move - assuming he would even know what to make of them."

Ren chewed at the inside of his lip while he thought. "Think of the words you're likely to need most," he suggested. "I'll write a list - our word, his, and how his should be said. If you hold the paper for him and point, he can read it."

"Lorewalkers," Feng said with some admiration. "That's a clever solution and should do for most things."

"It will do," Mei Fan agreed. She tapped one claw thoughtfully against her lips, thinking. "Water, broth, pain, numb, sleep..."

"Slow down," Ren huffed, half laughing. He went back to his writing case by the fire and began writing out a good sized list as the healers rattled off words and partial phrases and thought of more, all of their ears canted towards the reassuring, steady breaths of the still figure sleeping quietly on the other side of the tent.


	6. Revision - Author Note

Just a quick note - I have reworked chapters 1-5. The previous chapters 1-5 are now 1-3. Chapters 4 & 5 are new and I don't know if AO3 alerts for revisions or just new chapters, so I'll put this note here to alert people - chapters 4 & 5 are brand new, previously un-posted, and if you're watching this story I'd suggest going back and catching them! ^_^


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